Ecotourism: An Environmental Analysis

Ecotourism is the travel to natural areas for the purpose of appreciating nature while having minimum negative impact on the environment. As defined by IUCN (The World Conservation Union) Ecotourism is “environmentally responsible travel and visitation to relatively undisturbed natural areas, in order to enjoy and appreciate nature (and any accompanying cultural features both past and present) that promotes conservation, has low negative visitor impacts, and provides for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local people” (Ceballos Lascurain, 1996). It strives to educate the tourist, foster conservation and to make the local community benefit directly and indirectly from ecotourism activities. Ecotourism is very important so that

2008, the strict conservation of forest sometimes restrict local people from taking benefits of Non-timber Forest Products (NTF) and adversely affect their livelihood. Ecotourism and making marketing channels for the sale of NTF and agricultural products will overcome this problem and can enhance their livelihood. National parks are of paramount importance to the society because of the benefits they offer, one salient value is preserving the biodiversity for present and future generations, but the way in which protection is being carried out is subject to debate (Charnley et.al, 2007). Protection of National parks has largely been by the efforts of central governments (Berkes, 2007) and majority of the revenue collected goes back into the central accounts. So the issue of conservation and the concept of ecotourism become difficult to implement because of this bottleneck. Yeo Chang (2009) noted that unless local participation increased in protected area management, there is bound to be problems for conservation. It is against this backdrop that this study was carried out to shed light on their personal characteristics and their perceptions of ecotourism

Each species of animals and plants in this region has its own unique characteristics which enable it to survive and flourish in a particular niche and the consequent spectrum of color, size, shape, physiology, behavior and ecology displayed by these species is aesthetically and biologically intriguing (Darling, 1995).

The vegetation of Okomu National Park consists mainly of secondary high forest on well drained plateau sites. Despite heavy logging of the area between the 1920s and the 1980s, the area still remains the least disturbed representative example of the rainforest ecosystem west of the River Niger. The Park contains a unique assemblage of plant and animal diversity, some of which are endemic to this area. It can boast of about 700 species of butterflies, 231 species of birds, 150 species of plant about which 40% are medicinal, 94 species of animals and 32 species of amphibians (Ajayi,